By Order of Dionysus
by fanfic.is.my.soma
Summary: The job is dangerous, but quitting is even more so. Rated T for character death.


**A/N: **This is my first Inception fanfic, so please review and tell me what's working and what isn't! I may write more fics and try to hit every genre category within the same fandom, so if sad is not your thing, keep coming back anyway-they will not all be sad.

Everyone always warned them that the job would kill them, would tear them apart. But in the end, it was the quitting that did it.

…

There were...effects that came with near-constant Somnacin use, effects that everyone in the business knew about but no one discussed. New dreamers, the ones just starting out, usually did their homework beforehand and knew what they were getting into. Some didn't bother, didn't care, didn't expect to live for long anyway. A few slipped through the cracks of research and tacit understanding and only found out later, when it was too late.

At least one dreamer never knew what hit her, until the very end.

When Cobb brought the new, bright-eyed architect in for the first time, planning to dive right into a dream with her and explain everything, Arthur tried to stop him, with a hand on the extractor's arm as the girl took in the warehouse from a few yards away.

"Have you told her yet?"

"Told her what?" Cobb knew what; he wouldn't meet Arthur's eyes.

"About Somnacin. About what it's going to do to her."

"She'll be fine." The older man shrugged him off. When the point man still blocked him, Cobb raised his hands defensively. "Look, Ariadne's only coming in for this one job, I swear. Two months of prep, and she's out, never touches it again. It's not like she's coming on the actual job, she'll only need to go under for basic training and teaching us the mazes."

Arthur removed his hand and gave Cobb a sharp look. "Fine. That's how it had better be."

…

It was nothing like that, of course.

Ariadne took to dreaming like a hawk to the sky. When she came back after storming out the first time, Arthur could see the lustre in her eyes and knew she was hooked. On the dreams, yes, not the drug, but that would follow soon enough. He wanted to tell her to run, to get as far away as she could before this destroyed her life. But the hunger in her face was too like his own, in the early days, and he handed her a needle and started talking about paradoxical structures.

He was the point man, the one in charge of making sure their _one-time_ architect didn't overdo it and get too much Somnacin in her system since it was clear Cobb wasn't going to bother about it. No one, in fact, seemed to be bothered by how much Ariadne went under during those two months. Arthur had a pretty good idea of how much time in dreamscapes was needed to give a person basic familiarity with the finer points of dreamshare and building, and she was under for easily twice the time necessary. More, because she was the opposite of a slow learner, judging by how Cobb wouldn't stop praising her to the skies when she wasn't around. Judging by what Arthur saw himself during her training sessions with him.

The more he saw, the more determined he was to prevent her from becoming permanently hooked. She had a brilliant, beautiful mind, and she deserved a long, long life of peace and quiet and building real things-not a life spent underground, on the run, everything she ever made collapsed in strangers' dreams and gone forever when a bullet finally found her head.

So when he kissed her, in the hotel she had designed and he had dreamed up, it was with the full expectation-the _hope_-that he would never see her again after they both got off the plane. It was a kiss goodbye.

Still. There were all sorts of things that could happen to an unprotected female student, alone in Europe, who'd just participated in major corporate espionage. So as they deplaned, he slipped a card into her bag with his number and a quick note.

_Only in case of emergency. -A_

For three weeks, then four, then five, there was nothing. Arthur actually started to relax a little, thinking that Cobb had actually been right for once, that Ariadne would be completely fine.

He was in New York with Dom when it happened. They'd been looking for another job, something smaller and quieter-they should've been sooner, really, but having their own PASIV they could afford to break longer between jobs. Ariadne was not so fortunate.

The call came at eight in the evening-2AM Paris time. He almost didn't recognize her voice, almost hung up. All the life was gone from it, with only a dull shell left behind.

"Who is this?"

"Arthur, I'm sorry, I tried not to call-"

He was alert in an instant. "Ariadne? What's the matter?" A redundant question. There was only one thing that could make her sound like that, and it was mostly his fault because he should've done something at the beginning, but he was still going to _kill_ Cobb.

"I don't know. Everything was fine for like a week after the job, and then I started dreaming again, like you said, but it hurt, and then when I was awake I would just feel numb, and nothing seems to matter, and I think I'm going crazy…" The words should've come pouring forth, accompanied by tears and sobs. Instead, they seemed to trudge, in an emotionless monotone.

"Ariadne, listen. Listen, okay? I know how to help. I'm getting a flight to you right now." Even as he spoke the words, his fingers flew across a laptop keyboard, reserving his seat on the first plane leaving for France that he could hope to catch. He tried to keep his voice calm as he continued. "Have you moved since the job? I need to know where to find you."

"No. I haven't moved. I thought about it, but then I just couldn't be bothered."

"Okay. I'm on my way right now, Ariadne. It's going to be okay."

Barely pausing on his way out of the room to snatch the PASIV and his grab bag-a compact backpack with everything he needed to go on the run in a hurry-Arthur made to exit the suite but bumped into Cobb.

"Whoa, where are you off to? Shouldn't you tell me if we have to make a run for it?" the extractor asked.

Arthur turned, fighting the impulse to snap at his friend. "Ariadne's going through Somnacin withdrawal," he said evenly. "Third stage at least, and she only just now called. If I hadn't given her my number, she'd be going through this alone."

A pageant of emotions danced across Cobb's face-regret, surprise, concern, curiosity. "So you're going to her?"

"You'd better believe it." Arthur couldn't resist a parting snarl at his partner. "If you'd stuck by your word and imposed some boundaries, maybe-just maybe-this could've been avoided. But no, you had to let her experience and create and fall into the same hole all of us are in. Really big of you, wasn't it, to insist she get out of dreamshare when you knew she'd have to come crawling back anyway."

Cobb, shocked, looked as though he wanted to reply, but Arthur didn't give him the chance, leaving the other man alone in the suite with the resounding slam of the door.

…

When he finally arrived at her flat, it was midday, the time chafing at him like a poorly sized shoe. In an effort to maintain some semblance of civility, he knocked at her door rather than barge his way in, encouraged slightly by the sounds of movement that resulted. The door opened, and the architect stood before him.

Arthur would've given everything he'd made on the Fischer job to not have had to see her like that, pale and gaunt and staring at him as though she had no idea why he was there.

"Arthur." She said his name without emotion. The vivacious spark that so thoroughly characterized her was nearly extinguished. She stood aside to let him in, but made no further attemtps at conversation.

He walked past her to sit on the couch, barely breaking stride to drop the backpack and PASIV. She hesitated a moment, then joined him. His eyes went to a long, curved scar on her forearm.

"How did that happen?" he asked quietly.

"An accident," she said, shrugging one shoulder. "I dropped a knife, cutting up-something. Supper? I haven't really been hungry lately." She looked up at him. "It's okay, it didn't hurt."

Arthur forced his voice to remain steady. "Have you had any other injuries like that? Accidents and things?"

Ariadne-what was left of Ariadne-seemed to consider. "I stub my toes a lot on stuff, because I don't really feel them. But that's it."

He took a deep breath; she had only just started flirting with the fourth stage. "Listen, I think we might need you to go under. It'll help."

That, more than anything, seemed to faze her. She shook her head emphatically. "No. Whenever I dream, it hurts. Besides, weren't you always telling me I shouldn't go under so much?"

_This is why._ "It's different now. It won't hurt, I promise."

When the needle went into her wrist, he wanted to apologize, because this was the end of any hope she'd ever had for a normal life, a good life, the kind of life she deserved so richly. He hated Cobb for bringing her into this predicament and hated himself for not intervening before.

But a life with dreamsharing was the only kind of life she could have now.

The instant the dream started, she was building and building and building. Arthur thought he recognized elements of the hotel from Fischer's second level, and some of the paradoxical structures he had taught her, blended together with rose windows and flying buttresses forming fractals farther out than he could see. Ariadne barely noticed him, engrossed with the building, but she was laughing and the light was back in her eyes.

She was still laughing when they woke up, and the first thing he knew was her pulling him over for a long, exuberant kiss. He tried to pull away.

"If you knew-" he couldn't find the words to explain "-if you knew the whole story, you would never kiss me like that."

"Hush." She enforced the command by kissing him again. "You are my knight in shining armor and I am going to make up for lost time here. Do you know how long I wanted to want to do that, but I just couldn't feel anything?"

He knew.

…

It took him months to accept that she cared for him and wasn't just coasting on the rush of returned feeling that the PASIV had brought. It took longer than that to stop trying to tell her that he didn't deserve it, that he hadn't really saved her.

Without either of them knowing exactly when, they became a couple, with Dom acting as a good-natured third wheel just as Arthur had done for him and Mal years ago. Despite his attempts to deny it, he came to realize that he loved the architect fiercely. In a world where too many people were carrying a bullet for him, Ariadne was peace.

Dom brought them home for Christmas their second winter as a team. Arthur had always been "Uncle Arthur" to Dom's kids, but they'd never met Ariadne before. When Dom introduced her as Aunt Ariadne, Philippa put her head on one side and regarded the new arrival thoughtfully.

"Are you Uncle Arthur's wife?" she asked.

With remarkable composure, Ariadne said that she was not.

"Are you going to be?" Philippa persisted.

Ariadne turned to look up at him. "Well, I guess that's up to him, isn't it?"

They were married three months later, using their real names for once. Dom offered to give them a break between jobs, let them have a proper honeymoon. Ariadne laughed him off.

"We travel all the time for the job, anyhow," she said. Later, she confided in Arthur that she hoped he didn't mind, it was just that last time she took a break she felt so _sick_…

He kissed her and told her it was fine, he completely understood.

…

Eventually, she had to take a break, because of the baby. Dom and Mal had lost their first, before Philippa, and they'd always suspected it was because Mal had kept using Somnacin during the pregnancy. The story was enough to make Ariadne swear off even touching a PASIV for the next nine months.

They were lucky; Dom still remembered the name of the chemist who'd supplied Mal while she was pregnant with Philippa and James, and the man was still in business. He sold a drug that tricked the body into thinking it was consuming Somnacin, but was less harmful to pregnant women. It wouldn't let you dream, but it would keep you alive. The stuff was hard to get, both because of the price and because if you've made an illegal, addictive dream drug, you'd do anything in your power to eliminate anything like an antidote.

Arthur paid what it took. The pills were added to Ariadne's regimen, and when she asked what they were he couldn't bring himself to explain, because if he told her the truth she woud surely hate him.

"Somnacin tends to stick in your system," he said, effortlessly spitting out the half-truth. "The pills are to make sure those traces don't affect the baby." She believed him.

The baby was perfect. Arthur insisted on naming her Hope. The hope that he couldn't suppress after seeing Ariadne go nine months without a single shared dream. Hope that maybe they could stretch this out, if she kept taking the pills-he would keep paying for them as long as he needed to.

But with Hope born, Ariadne saw no reason to keep taking the pills. She didn't go back to dream work right away, but two and a half weeks after Hope's arrival, she woke up screaming from a dream where everything, she said, had hurt, and Arthur knew there was no help for it.

…

Two years came and went. Hope started walking, and whoever was carrying a bullet for Ariadne hadn't found her yet. She and Arthur and Dom remained the best in the business.

Arthur kept in contact with the chemist Dom had connected him with, just in case. The man warned him that times were getting tough, and it was getting harder and harder to get away with selling the substitute, and if Arthur and Ariadne knew what was good for them, they wouldn't put themselves in a position to need what he sold again.

So of course, three days after Arthur received this news, he found himself staring at Ariadne as she told him _I think I'm pregnant again._

It was the same story all over again, except that this time the substitute cost more and came in smaller shipments. Arthur had stockpiled about a month's worth after the last time, just in case, but they never quite needed to dip into it, and as the fifth month started to wrap up, he almost let himself relax.

After all, Ariadne was so happy. He watched her dance Hope around the kitchen of their apartment (they'd actually had a semipermanent apartment for over two years now, which continued to stun him), and thought she'd never been more beautiful.

Then the shipments stopped coming.

At first, he tried to tell himself they were just late, even though such a thing had never happened before. Finally, he made himself go digging. It didn't take much research to discover that their chemist's workshop had been blown up by unknown parties, with him in it. The resulting fire had destroyed an entire block.

Arthur's first thought was _How do I tell Ariadne that we won't be able to retire?_ Because just the other day, Ariadne had been talking about how they, or at least she, should start looking into another line of work, one that was a little more conducive to having two small children, and that problem that happened before when she tried to quit shouldn't be an issue because after all she'd gotten through two pregnancies, hadn't she?

His second thought was _How do I tell Ariadne that she'll be lucky to survive until the baby comes?_

They had fourteen weeks until the baby was due. The stockpile would get them through four of those weeks. That left ten, and Ariadne hadn't even made it six weeks last time without getting dangerously close to the fourth stage of withdrawal.

Using the PASIV was always an option, once the baby got close to viability, but he knew Ariadne well enough to know she would never consent to such a thing.

He went to go find her. Hope was in bed, and Ariadne was curled on the couch with a book, wrapped in a soft yellow blanket that draped over the curve of her belly.

"Ariadne." He sat down by her feet, and she looked up. "I just got some bad news. The chemist who's been supplying us with those pills...his whole block just got blown up; he's not going to be supplying anyone anymore. After we run out of what we've got-" He tried to find the words to explain, to apologize, but couldn't. "You might start feeling some effects from not using the PASIV. Like after the Fischer job."

She still wasn't worried, smiling sweetly and calmly and it broke his heart. "I'll be fine. I can deal with whatever it is for ten weeks. After the baby comes, I'll go under for a little bit, and then we'll figure out a way to leave the job after that." Ariadne laughed at his worried expression and nudged his knee with her foot. "You don't have to look like that. I can handle myself, remember?"

…

Nine weeks and five days from the due date, the stockpile of Somnacin substitute ran out.

At eight weeks and six days, Ariadne woke up screaming, crying out that her dreams had been hurting her, that everything she touched burned like acid, even the air. Arthur did what he could to comfort her. When this repeated three nights in a row and she became afraid to go to sleep, he suggested looking for a sedative, but they couldn't find one that would definitely be safe for the baby. Ariadne said she didn't want to be stuck in the nightmares any longer than she had to be, anyhow.

At seven weeks, the two of them were in the kitchen making supper, and Hope came running in to show mommy the drawing she'd done. Ariadne always exclaimed over Hope's drawings, even the ones that seemed to be of nothing. On this occasion, she glanced at it briefly, murmured "That's very nice, Hope", and went back to chopping ingredients. Arthur looked over at her worriedly, then, after giving Hope her usual modicum of praise, asked "Are you feeling all right?"

"Sure," Ariadne shrugged. "My feet are a little cold, is all. Hey, we don't need so much of that. I'm not that hungry."

At six weeks and three days, he leaned over to kiss her and she smiled, but didn't reciprocate. "What was that for?" she asked. There had never needed to be a reason.

At five weeks and five days, she was barely eating more than Hope, and she stubbed her toes twice going around corners without even a wince, and nothing would make her laugh. Her hands were like ice. Arthur wished there was some deity he could beg to make the baby come early.

At five weeks, they were halfway through, but it wasn't enough, because he could barely get Ariadne to eat, or to care about anything, and her hands and feet were covered in bruises and little marks because she could barely feel them enough to avoid injury. She could barely feel anything, she said. He could see fear in her eyes struggling to show through the numbness, but never quite succeeding.

At four weeks and two days, she looked worse than she had when he'd found her after the Fischer job, with her body now struggling to maintain two lives instead of one. Arthur made her eat, kept sharp or dangerous things out of her reach, explained to Hope that yes, mommy was very sick, but she would be okay soon. He kissed Ariadne and told her she was brave and beautiful, and wept because the love of his life was slowly dying in front of him.

At three weeks and four days, he came home from an errand and found Ariadne bemusedly cutting her bony forearms with a blade from scissors he thought he'd hidden away. When he took the scissors away from her, anger and fear barely contained because of their daughter playing just down the hall, she looked at him in mild confusion and told him it didn't hurt. He bandaged the cuts, kissed her forehead, and went on a hazard-proofing crusade even more severe than the one that had followed Hope's arrival.

At three weeks and two days, he called Cobb, because the man needed to see what his negligence had caused. The fact that he couldn't watch over Ariadne and care for Hope simultaneously had nothing to do with it. When the extractor walked in and saw her, a shadow of her former vibrant self, sitting on the bed and staring into space, not even drawing, ignoring Hope as though she wasn't there, he broke down and wept. Arthur felt a perverse satisfaction at this. No matter how much Cobb cried for Ariadne, it would never be as much as Arthur already had done, and would do.

…

At two weeks and six days, Arthur woke up in the dead of night to find Ariadne's side of the bed empty. On instinct, he shot out of the room to search for her, but she was nowhere in the apartment. Something jogged his memory, a story he'd heard about a similar withdrawal case, and he found himself sprinting to the roof, heart in his mouth.

Ariadne was there, up on the edge, fully awake and walking as calmly as if she were on a sidewalk, not ten stories up. She didn't answer when he called out her name, although when he continued shouting she did turn her head to see what the noise was. There was no recognition in her eyes.

Arthur didn't bother to ask what she was doing up there. It was enough to know she was well and truly into the fourth stage. There was no time to scream at the unfairness of it, no time to curse whatever diabolical, selfish genius had made Somnacin what it was. He was able to get close to her, and gently pull her off the edge of the roof onto himself.

"You can't do that," he said, trying to keep his voice calm because speaking with emotion only made her more confused. "You have to think about the baby."

The baby was the one appeal he could make anymore that she would listen to. Reminding her of the life she carried could get her to eat, could get her to sleep, could get her to stop digging the handle of the plastic spoon into her flesh. It was enough to get her to follow him down off the roof.

…

At two weeks, Arthur brought her breakfast and saw tears running down her face. To anyone who knew less than he did, this would've seemed like a good sign, that she was finally feeling something again. Arthur knew better. There was nothing he could do to save her now.

"My head hurts," she said, choking back a sob. There was still no recognition in her face.

"I know," he said softly. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He left her with the plate of toast, closing the door quietly. Hope wasn't up yet. Cobb was.

"Ariadne has just entered the fifth stage of withdrawal," Arthur told his partner's back, voice laced with fury.

Silence reigned.

"She's going to die, Cobb."

The other man still didn't turn.

"If it hadn't been for us, she would be fine right now. She'd have her degree, and be building amazing, beautiful things. Or even just things that would last. And she would have decades and decades to look forward to, to do anything she wanted. She would've married someone who wasn't a criminal with ten fake identities, and she would've gotten to watch her kids grow up. And yes, she still would've died eventually, but it wouldn't have been at twenty-six with her brain destroying itself."

Cobb finally turned to face him. "What exactly do you want me to say?"

"I don't want you to say anything. Just help me keep her alive till the baby comes, and then I never want to see you again."

…

Ten days before the baby was officially due, Ariadne went into labor. Arthur had already made arrangements with a hospital that wouldn't ask too many questions.

They wouldn't let him stay with her, because complications were practically unavoidable under the circumstances, but he had guessed as much anyway. Hope had been left in the care of a reliable neighbor, but Cobb waited with him, both men glancing occasionally at the silver case resting by Arthur's leg and neither man speaking about it.

Finally, Cobb broke the silence. "You know if you use that it'll kill her."

Arthur didn't look at him. "She's in the fifth stage. At this point, she's going to die anyway. She's got a week at the most, and she wouldn't be able to function, or do anything except scream because her head feels like it's splitting. This way, she gets to dream on the way out, painlessly."

"And you get to say goodbye."

"Don't tell me you wouldn't have wanted the same chance."

Cobb, perhaps thinking of an open window, a plummeting stiletto, said nothing.

…

When he found her, she was building, an impossible city flowing up from the ground around her vantage point on a set of floating Penrose steps. Engaged as she was, she turned instantly at the sound of his approach, bringing the steps down to meet the ground and running into his arms.

He let her stay there as long as she wanted, painfully aware that this could be the last time. Finally, she pulled back just enough to look up at him.

"How's the baby?" she asked. "I had the baby, right? That's why I'm dreaming."

"Yes. He's doing just fine," Arthur forced out, trying to take in every detail. He hadn't seen her this happy, this _herself_, in so long. "You should pick the name."

Ariadne nodded, looking serious. "I was thinking maybe this should be the last one-and I'm totally ahead of you on the naming thing; check my nightstand if you don't believe me. But I mean, I thought I was handling the breaks from dreaming okay before, but this last time was worse than after the Fischer job. I don't think I could do it again."

He shook his head, holding her a little more tightly, but refusing to cry. "Ariadne. There's something I need to tell you, right now."

So she led him to sit on the Penrose steps, and he told her. He explained how Somnacin, seemingly so innocuous, had more side effects than affecting pregnant women. How, as long as one kept using it on a regular basis, nothing would appear to be wrong. After a certain level of exposure, however, full withdrawal was simply not survivable. It was the only drug in the world with no addiction symptoms until you tried to quit.

"So that was what the pills were for, that you said were-Arthur, why didn't you tell me about this before?" She didn't sound angry, yet, only disbelieving.

He couldn't look at her. "When you first started out, I wanted Cobb to warn you. He said it wasn't necessary, because you wouldn't be going under enough to get hooked. But then you did, and I saw it happening and I should've stopped you before it was too late. I tried making Cobb cut you off after the Fischer job. Then you called, and I knew you were hooked, and…" His shoulders sagged. "I thought you would hate me, for not intervening. And even though I knew I deserved it, that was the one thing I couldn't stand. So I kept it a secret. Most dreamers know before they get involved, and don't talk about it, so no one else was going to tell you either."

Silence hung in the air for a moment. Then Ariadne shrugged. "Well, I wish you'd told me at some point before, but at least I know now. I've had my Somnacin fix, so everything should be okay, right? We can just…"

Arthur couldn't put it off any longer. "Ari, you were in the fifth stage of withdrawal. At this point, reintroducing Somnacin is fatal. I wouldn't have done it, except that you were going to die anyway, much more slowly and painfully."

She stared at him, disbelieving, for a moment, and then finally broke down. She sobbed into his shoulder, and he held her shaking body close until the tears were spent. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. I never wanted this for you."

After a long time, she looked into his face again, tear-streaked. "It's not your fault," she said firmly. "I would've still done exactly what I did, no matter what you or Cobb told me. I've gotten to build amazing, beautiful things, and my babies have the best point man ever for a father."

Time passed; it was hard to say how much.

"How long did you put on the clock?" Ariadne asked.

"Five minutes. We get an hour. When the dream ends, I'll wake up, and you won't." Arthur paused. "I'm sorry if this isn't how you would've wanted it, but I needed to explain. And I wanted to be able to talk to you one more time, while you were yourself. And this way you get to build."

Ariadne smiled-no, _grinned_. "You bet I get to build. Come on, we should have time for me to show you some things."

She tugged him by the hand into the city of impossible buildings, and he followed and tried to take in every last detail that she pointed out, memorizing the sound of her voice and the little quirks of her mind that had always been unique to her dreams.

Then Edith Piaf's voice, distorted but inevitable, echoed out across the city, and there hadn't been enough time.

"Ariadne, I-" She kissed him and wouldn't let him finish.

"Don't you dare apologize again. _I love you._" Her head fell onto his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her. "I love you, too."

They stood like that, together, as Ariadne's dream city collapsed around them.

…

"You're retiring?" Cobb demanded, days later. "Arthur, you can't just-"

Arthur laughed bitterly. "I'm not taking that way out, not yet. I've got kids to look after, Dom, and I've got the money for Somnacin without jobs. I've got a PASIV, and I'll use it, but only as often as I need to."

"If you're worried about a shade-"

"That is actually the least of my concerns. Frankly, Cobb, I don't care what you think. I meant what I said at the hospital; I don't ever want to see you again, and the only reason I'm still living with myself is because I don't trust anybody else to raise Ariadne's children."

The extractor hesitated a moment, then left without another word. Arthur knew he wasn't being fair, that Cobb was grieving in his own way, too, but life had not been kind to him recently, and he wasn't interested in being fair.

…

When Hope and Evander got old enough to ask, he told them their mother had died of cancer. It was easier than the truth. Arthur was far from a natural parent, but he did everything he could to raise them right. Telling them about dream share, about why he was forced to attach a needle to his wrist every couple of weeks, was difficult, but he was able to explain in a way that didn't make the forbidden fruit too tempting. If he had his way, his children-Ariadne's children-would never touch Somnacin.

He saw Ariadne more often than not, in the dreams he had on the PASIV, but he never spoke to her or even went near her. She was only a projection, a shade, and he refused to let his memories of the real Ariadne be tainted.

In all this time, Arthur never wept. He would see her soon enough. Right now, Hope and Evander needed him, but once they were on their own, he knew without consciously planning it that he would disappear. It would be easy to run away, put a bullet through his head, and wake up wherever Ariadne was now. He didn't have to decide; it was just something he had known ever since he had woken up from their last dream together.

But life went on, and it wouldn't let him go. The children grew up, but they didn't stop needing him. College graduations, grandchildren, they couldn't have trapped him more effectively if they'd tried. Arthur looked in the mirror and saw that he'd grown old, far older than he'd ever intended to be, and knew he would never be able to escape.

He was more separated from Ariadne than he had ever been, and the knowledge was enough to make him finally break down in tears.


End file.
